PWIR: Congratulations! Your Energy Bill Just Got Cheaper.

Submitted by Michigan LCV on Sun, 09/11/2011 - 10:35pm

If your electricity comes from Consumer’s Energy, then your energy bills just got cheaper. A $2.50 monthly surcharge just went down 75% due to lower-than-expected costs for renewable energy. At that reduced cost, perhaps it’s about time that the state consider investing in even more clean energy.

It’s cheap, it’s clean… it’s only a beginning

How closely do you read your utility bill? The $2.50 surcharge on there for renewable energy surcharge is what the utilities tack on to your bill to cover the anticipated costs of a legislative mandate to generate 10% of their power through renewable sources by 2015. At this moment we’re not only on track to meet that commitment, but we’re doing it cheaper than anticipated. Hence Consumers cutting the surcharge to a mere $0.65 each month.

And that means you save money! Let’s take out the calculator for a moment: With the surcharge cut by $1.85 per month… multiply by twelve… carry the two… you save $22.20 each year. For many Michigan families that is a signifcant savings. These cuts are a reminder of how much more cost effective renewable energy is than coal which, at the moment, makes up roughly 60% of our overall power generation in the state.

It is time to begin exploring further investments in clean energy. Coal is costing Michigan well over $1 billion dollars each year to import. In fact, the Michigan Public Service Commission calculated coal to cost roughly 27% more than renewable energy. It is time that we cash in on Michigan's potential for economic growth through renewable energy instead of continuing the outdated tradition of importing coal and exporting our limited cash.

On Tuesday, the leadership from each of these organizations came together in Kalamazoo to send a clear message that would transcend both partisan and ideological boundaries. In short, they noted that not all the slices out of the budget must be painful; we can use Green Scissors to make genuinely beneficial cuts.

The Green Scissors Report they were touting is an annual study that identifies spending that is not only extra fat in the federal budget, but is actually detrimental to America’s air, land, and water. Given Michigan’s heavy representation on the new “supercommittee” in Congress - a committee tasked with cutting $1.5 trillion from the federal budget that includes Congressmen Upton and Camp - the authors of the report came to speak directly to these representatives' constituents.

Given the truly diverse collection of organizations speaking up, we hope Congressmen Upton and Camp are listening. Voices like these don’t often speak in unison and, when they do, it is with good reason.

What Snyder can pull from Obama’s jobs speech

In the President’s message to a joint session of Congress, he spoke passionately about his vision for getting America’s economy back on track. In a way, getting us back on track is very literally where we need to be to get our country back up to speed.

Obama’s plan includes $50 billion in infrastructure investments with $2 billion of that total directed at high-speed rail.

Additionally, the President lent his support to the bipartisan idea of a National Infrastructure Bank, a concept with the backing of both the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. We believe a similar project here in Michigan can garner equally wide acceptance. Improvements in public transportation and high-speed rail will lead all of us toward a more modern Michigan with real savings in terms of both cost and pollution.